“A Conversation with Theresa Gloster: Self-taught Art and the Testimonies of Memory"
Date: Thursday, Feb 28, 2008
Time: 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Place: Hyde Hall / Institute of the Humanities
The Folklore Program, the Center for the Study of the American
South, and the Dept. of Art will host a conversation with Theresa
Gloster, one of the South's most compelling self-taught artists, on
Thursday, Feb. 28, at 3:00 p.m. in the Institute for Arts and
Humanities' Incubator Room, 203 Hyde Hall. Ms. Gloster is a “memory
painter,” a self-taught artist who paints remembered scenes from her
life in an African American community in the North Carolina mountains.
She will be bringing a selection of her exuberant and
thought-provoking paintings to accompany her presentation, as she
discusses the ways that memory presses itself into painted testimony.
Please join us as we consider how history, inspiration, and aesthetics
intersect in the world of vernacular art.
Theresa Gloster's path to painting--like that of so many other
southern self-taught artists--began with prayer, as she beseeched God
to grant her a gift that would bring fulfillment. The answer to those
prayers came when she first saw the paintings of another Southern
vernacular artist, and realized that this was to be her path. The
paintings that have since emerged--on canvas, cardboard, masonite, and
a variety of other surfaces--tellingly chronicle African American life
in a segregated South. Yet the focus is not on the oppressive
restraints of Jim Crow, as is so often the case in Southern memory
painting. Instead, Ms. Gloster captures the lived vibrancy of life in
African American communities, detailing the everyday moments that
grounded and gave meaning to African American identity. Her
paintings, as she says, offer “lessons for the younger generations, .
. . so that they can know what can be.”
The conversation with Theresa Gloster will be moderated by Dr. Glenn
Hinson, chair of UNC's Folklore Program. A selection of Ms.
Gloster's paintings will be hanging in the second-floor Incubator Room
of Hyde Hall before the presentation, for those who are interested in
viewing them.
